On Wednesday, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, of all people, weighed in with some remarkably trenchant analysis on the results of the Jupiter trial. That's the study that showed people with normal cholesterol but high C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, had a reduced risk of heart attack if they took AstraZeneca's statin Crestor.

"This is a great breakthrough in the battle to find things to prescribe to people who don't need them," he declared midway through a segment called "Cheating Death with Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A." (That's Doctor of Fine Arts, and is apparently qualification enough for some biting medical analysis.)